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Years have passed since The Heroic
Trio, since then the atom bomb has been dropped, and since most of
the water has been contaminated, drinking water is rationed by faceless Mr
Kim's (Anthony Wong) Clear Water organisation. The heroic trio itself has
long been disbanded, and while Thiefcatcher (Maggie Cheung) is still a
foul-mouthed bounty hunter, San the former Invisible Girl (Michelle Yeoh)
is working for an aid organisation and Dong Dong (Anita Mui) has quit to
be the Wonder Woman to look after her daughter Cindy (Sze Ning) and her
husband commissioner Lau (Damian Lau). Then though Lau is framed with
trying to assassinate the president (Kwan Shan) and soon killed for it,
and Dong Dong is thrown into some dungeon. Now it's up to Thiefcatcher to
both take care of Cindy and find the fabled source of clear water, and San
has to bring the president's double to safety while at the same time using
him as bait. The point of all this is that it were actually Mr Kim and the
commander in chief of the army (Paul Chun) who tried to assassinate the
president and take over the country, and now everything has to be done to
save the president's life and keep him in hiding, even if that's risking
the life of his double. Thiefcatcher and Cindy manage to find clear
water, and not only that, they find out that there never was any water
contaminated by the atom bomb, it was Mr Kim's organisation that
contaminated the drinking water while artificially holding back the clear
water for profits. Accordingly Thiefcatcher opens the floodgates. In her
dungeon, Dong Dong becomes Wonder Woman once more, escapes, kills the
army's commander in chief to avenge herself, then meets up with San - to
fight her, because she thinks San has kidnapped the president and framed
her husband. It's only when Mr Kim joins the fight that she realizes who
the real enemy is. In the finale, while the president comes out of
hiding to announce drinking water for all and deliver on his promise, too,
Wonder Woman and San are joined by Thiefcatcher in their fight against Mr
Kim, and in the end they succeed in killing him, but Wonder Woman has to
give her life doing so ... Most of the time, sequels,
especially when they are made only shortly after the original's release,
are nothing but rehash's of the first movie's formula. In that respect, you
can't blame Executioners for lack of trying to be different from The
Heroic Trio: The set-up is completely different, the tone is more
sombre, the costumes are less colourful, and the story is way more
complex. However, considering the masterpiece The
Heroic Trio was, just being different isn't enough for Executioners
to live up to it: Where The Heroic
Trio had over-the-top action setpieces, tongue-in-cheek humour,
genre mainstays turned onto their heads and nearly-iconic imagery aplenty,
Executioners is more of a routine action film in the science
fiction mode. Sure, the action is still good, but not nearly as crazy as
in the first film, and the whole thing is at least competently directed,
but it lacks the self-irony of the earlier film and is not nearly as
well-paced. Taken on its own merits, Executioners is still ok
genre fare, there's no doubt about this, but it's miles from being a
masterpiece.
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